<!doctype html public "-//w3c//dtd html 4.0 transitional//en"> <html> Terry, What I read here is "I told him, I told him, I told him...."  I surely hope you wrote down some of this telling.  Even if I make a short-term loan to one of my very responsible adult children, I write it down and they get a copy.  It is surprising how in conversations where the expectations seem perfectly clear to one person, the other one will remember something else. I hope this works out just fine for you.  I'd be interested to know when you're finished how things went, and if you got all your money. Regards, Clyde Terry Farrell wrote: <blockquote TYPE=CITE>This local guy brought me his family's 1875 Knabe square grand with the goal of making it function. My guess is that Knabe did not string the piano like this, so apparently is was restrung some 50+ years ago. Everything else is original and worn as is typical. During the initial inspection at his home I spent at least a half hour trying to convince him to not spend a penny on the piano - or to go all the way and dump $10K to $15K into it. But nope, "everything is just fine with it, its just the few keys that don't work, and, and, and, and.....". Then I told him that common sense told me to walk away from this kind of work. He told me I came highly recommended and didn't want to go elsewhere. Then I spent a half hour telling him all about the theory of "opening a can or worms" and that anything that doesn't look quite right now, will inevitably be ten times worse when I dig into it. He said that was OK. I did a car analogy with a 1915 model T (the worn out '66 Dodge Dart just wouldn't even come close). Didn't phase him. I figured a reasonable estimate might be $500 to $1,000 to fix the loose tuning pins (oval), tune it, and fix the few broke keys. So I told him I'll charge by the hour and that my honest guess is that I can make it function like an old worn out piano (hit key, make noise) for something under $2,000 with NO guarantees. He said OK and him and his six burly sons and grandsons showed up at my shop the next day with the piano. "It's always something!" Square grands are great! ('Course I haven't dug into this thing yet........)</blockquote> </html>